It fitted so exactly that the whole coffer seemed like a single piece of stone mysteriously hollowed from within.  On the sides and edges were some odd-looking protuberances wrought just as finely as any other portion of the coffer which had been sculptured by manifest design in the cutting of the stone.  They had queer-shaped holes or hollows, different in each; and, like the rest, were covered with the hieroglyphic figures, cut finely and filled in with the same blue-green cement.

On the other side of the great sarcophagus stood another small table of alabaster, exquisitely chased with symbolic figures of gods and the signs of the zodiac.  On this table stood a case of about a foot square composed of slabs of rock crystal set in a skeleton of bands of red gold, beautifully engraved with hieroglyphics, and coloured with a blue green, very much the tint of the figures on the sarcophagus and the coffer.  The whole work was quite modern.

But if the case was modern what it held was not.  Within, on a cushion of cloth of gold as fine as silk, and with the peculiar softness of old gold, rested a mummy hand, so perfect that it startled one to see it.  A woman’s hand, fine and long, with slim tapering fingers and nearly as perfect as when it was given to the embalmer thousands of years before.  In the embalming it had lost nothing of its beautiful shape; even the wrist seemed to maintain its pliability as the gentle curve lay on the cushion.  The skin was of a rich creamy or old ivory colour; a dusky fair skin which suggested heat, but heat in shadow.  The great peculiarity of it, as a hand, was that it had in all seven fingers, there being two middle and two index fingers.  The upper end of the wrist was jagged, as though it had been broken off, and was stained with a red-brown stain.  On the cushion near the hand was a small scarab, exquisitely wrought of emerald.

“That is another of Father’s mysteries.  When I asked him about it he said that it was perhaps the most valuable thing he had, except one.  When I asked him what that one was, he refused to tell me, and forbade me to ask him anything concerning it.  ‘I will tell you,’ he said, ’all about it, too, in good time—­if I live!’”

“If I live!” the phrase again.  These three things grouped together, the Sarcophagus, the Coffer, and the Hand, seemed to make a trilogy of mystery indeed!

At this time Miss Trelawny was sent for on some domestic matter.  I looked at the other curios in the room; but they did not seem to have anything like the same charm for me, now that she was away.  Later on in the day I was sent for to the boudoir where she was consulting with Mrs. Grant as to the lodgment of Mr. Corbeck.  They were in doubt as to whether he should have a room close to Mr. Trelawny’s or quite away from it, and had thought it well to ask my advice on the subject.  I came to the conclusion that he had better not be too near; for the first at all events, he could easily be moved closer if necessary.  When Mrs. Grant had gone, I asked Miss Trelawny how it came that the furniture of this room, the boudoir in which we were, was so different from the other rooms of the house.